MA Trading
One day at college, arsing about and geting to know the miracle that was Windows 3.0, I came across a spreadsheet. I don't think it was Excel, may have been SuperCalc. Was that available for Windows at the time?

Anyway, I asked a mate whose name was Adam to explain how it worked. A couple of years beforehand, I was selling bags of sweets to people. I'd give the order forms out, people would order stuff. I'd pass them onto a guy who went to the cash and carry, he'd deliver them, I'd dish them out to the customers, he'd come back a week later to collect the cash and that weeks orders. I did none of the donkey-work and made about £25 extra a week on top of the tenner pocket money I was getting. This lasted until the Xmas when trade practically stopped.

I pointed out to Adam that this would have been ideal for my previous venture, so he demonstrated the spreadsheet based around the fictitious "Maudlin and Adam's Sweet Shop".

A couple of days later, he showed me a business card design he'd knocked up in CorelDraw 3. "MA Trading" and featured my home address (which contained the words 'court' and 'way' and looked like a trading estate address). We blagged some blueish card off the English teacher who had access to that sort of stuff, took it and the graphics to his Dad's office and printed out 50 cards or so.

Using this card, we went into a local cash and carry and managed to wangle an account card from them under the name of MA Trading Ltd.

A few weeks later, there was a college concert and we offered to do the interval refreshments.

We went back to the cash & carry and bought £60 worth of crisps, chocolates, drinks and biscuits.

We set up stall, and sure enough the people flooded out. By the end of the night, we'd broke even.

A few days later, we folded the company, shared the contents of the cash tin and the stock and MA Trading was no more.

About 5 years later, I received a court summons regarding trading under the pretence of a limited company. However, I soon realised it was fake put together by Adam by the info on the back stating that "I ought to wear a nice suit rather than that tatty thing in your wardrobe."
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 15:14, Reply)